154 Epitome of the Progress of JVatural Science. 



elementary instruction in grammar ; by this means he was prepar- 

 ed for the study of the prevailing learning of the day, under the 

 celebrated Englishman, Alcuin. When it has been stated of this 

 emperor, that he loiew not how to write, this is to be understood 

 of his ignorance of the large Roman character. His native 

 tongue, the Tudesque, or German, he was much attached to, 

 and wrote it with ease ; but when the large Roman character 

 came again into use, he experienced a difficulty in acquiring it : 

 he caused his signature, therefore, to be engraved upon the pom- 

 mel of the hilt of his sword. With this he affixed his manual ; 

 and on signing, he was wont to say, " I have signed it with the 

 hilt, I will maintain it with the point." Although this illustrious 

 monarch sought, by his example, to render learning popular, yet, 

 surrounded as he was by ecclesiastics, the prejudices against an- 

 cient literature still prevailed, and the encouragement which the 

 emperor intended for general learning, was too much diverted to 

 theology. The effort, therefore, to revive human learning, being 

 ill-directed, became abortive, and before the end of the ninth 

 century, Italy and France, torn to pieces by civil wars, were 

 again plunged into anarchy and darkness. It was thus the bril- 

 liant period of Charlemagne passed over, without producing 

 any real benefit to science ; resembling the aurora borealis, 

 which is not like the aurora of the east, the harbinger of im- 

 mediate day. 



Of the encouragement which learning received about these 

 times from the Saracens, it is not important we should now speak. 

 The caliph Almamon cultivated astronomy, and many other 

 branches of science received a rapid developement from them. 

 Their empire, however, fell to pieces in a comparatively short 

 period. Learning, with them, had been, as with the ancient 

 Romans, a fruit of their conquests. Plants which are raised 

 from the seed, are surer to take root, and to resist the vio- 

 lence of storms, than those which are transplanted in full blossom. 

 Europe, however, is indebted to the Saracens, for the arithmeti- 

 cal characters, and which it is probable, were derived by them 

 from the Greeks. 



The tenth century witnessed the continued successive and 

 bloody struggles, for the ruins of the Carlovingian monarchy. 

 The situation of the popes of Rome, who had to contend in turns 

 with the Saracens from Sicily, the Germans, and their own sub- 



